The advent of digital technology had led to the convergence of computing, networking, and high-bandwidth communication technologies to provide network connectivity for a multiplicity of integrated and interactive multimedia applications. Due to the development and demand of said multimedia applications, it is inevitable that network systems and infrastructures have to evolve from a myriad of discrete network systems into integration as well as hybridization of network systems and infrastructures, giving rise to network systems such as Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) enabled IP system.
In the internetworking environment, the Internet is presently the only global internetworking environment. The Internet is built upon Internet Protocol (IP) suites of network protocol stacks. Using IP-based routers and MPLS switches systems, data is routed from source to destination endpoints.
Currently, end-user would subscribe for Internet services from a single Internet Service Provider (ISP) by having interconnection between the Subscriber Network Equipment (SNE) and the ISP network gateway equipment. To provide for connectivity, the ISPs utilize existing circuit-based telephony switches and/or cable television (TV) infrastructures through copper wire, optic fibre, and/or wireless means to provide transmission medium services for network connectivity.
As known by those who are well-versed in the field, said Subscriber Network Equipment (SNE) has an operating system serving as network access controller for said SNE. Said network access controller has relevant network protocol stacks to support connectionless network systems, such as Internet Protocol (IP) as well as, to support Signaling System No. 7 (SS-7) network signaling and point-to-point connection, such as Point-To-Point Protocol (PPP).
Said SNE either works as a stand-alone or as a multiplexer able to provide network connectivity to a plurality of network-enabled User Premise Devices (UPD). Said SNE not only provides Local Area Network (LAN) based connectivity services for multi-connections and sessions of said plurality of User Datagram Protocols (UDP) at theft premises, but also provides external network connectivity and access to the Internet.
With SNE, such as Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and the likes, its network controller utilizes call establishment and PPP protocols to establish connectivity from the subscriber premise to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) network gateway switches using telephony network infrastructure. The Asynchronous Transfer Mode/Long-Term Evolution (ATM/LTE) network systems provide connectivity on the telephony section of the network while the MPLS-enabled IP network interfaces, supporting several Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVC), provides connectivity among a plurality of MPLS-enabled IP network switches on the Internet network section.
For data communication over copper telephony lines, frequencies not used for analog voice services are utilized for data transmission through the use of multi-carrier band modem, such as xDSL. Said multi-carrier band modems utilized Frequency-Division Multiplexing (FDM) means and Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) line code technology, to enable greater data service capacity by dividing the useful bandwidth into discrete and smaller frequency channels.
This multi-carrier band methodology is also utilized in wireless data communication from the carrier bandwidth spectrum. In addition, said multi-carrier band methodology had also evolved to incorporate not only the use of frequency and code-division multiplexing but also time-division multiplexing technology, as well.
With DMT implementation, all available data bandwidth for data transmission is allocated to two transmission channels, one for upload and the other for download. Said upload and download channels provide for connectivity between the SNE and the ISP network gateway. It is a common practice for most xDSL and wireless modems to allocate a pre-defined discrete range of frequencies for download channel while another pre-defined range of frequencies for upload channel. With adaptive rate-based DSL modem said allocation of predefined discrete range of frequencies had been eliminated and replaced with dynamic allocation of bandwidth frequencies.
During initialization of xDSL modems, the controller of the modern would test each of the carrier bands, known as “bin”, to establish the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for each multi-carrier band frequency. The controller will then make a plan on how to exploit each of the bins through what was termed “bits per bin” allocation. Those bins that have a good SNR will be chosen to transmit signals with a greater number of possible encoded values in each main clock cycle. If the SNR of the bins changes, the DSL modem can alter the bits-per-bin allocations.
It should be noted that although prior art provide for the classification of Quality of Service (QoS), based upon SNR factor, for each carrier band, it did not have the ability to prioritize and differing QoS data service for a plurality network connectivity based upon said QoS classification. As known by those well-versed in the field, none of the prior art documents, including those which use adaptive allocation of bandwidth technology, teaches means to dynamically portion bandwidth of differing QoS classification to support multi-mode connectivity sessions to multiple service providers or internetworking environments.
It should also be noted that data network devices disclosed in prior art documents only provide the means for multiple UPD connectivity for uploading and downloading channels, from the subscribers to a single ISP network gateway source, for a single-mode internetworking service. None of the prior art documents teach the means to support multi-mode connectivity sessions having the ability to subscribe to multiple ISPs. In addition, said network connectivity from existing ISPs provides only to a shared-media and connectionless IP-based internetworking environment. Thus prior art documents are only able to provide a single-mode internetworking environment.
With the increase usage and knowledge gain about the Internet network technology, the inherent weakness of shared-media and connectionless internetworking environment, which is its security vulnerability at the network level, had became well-known. Concern regarding the Internet inherent security vulnerability would inevitably leads to the need to develop a more secure internetworking environment, from a network level perspective.
From historic perspective, should one view the evolution of the telephony environment, one could gain insight to the possible evolution of the future multimedia internetworking environment. The first iteration of telephony environment is a party-line environment where there is no network switching capability. Calls were broadcast through the phone line to a collection of interconnected telephone sets, similarly to first iteration of shared-media data LAN network systems.
As usage for telecommunication increases along with the number of user sets, switching capability was implemented at the exchange level, initially using manual means which then advance to mechanical means. This gave rise to the second iteration of telephony network systems. Said second telephony comprises of a hybrid of switched and non-switched network topology, which in a sense, resemble the present MPLS-enabled IP based network system.
Privacy issue and requirement from end-users, as well as, advent of electronic means eventually led to the third iteration of telephony systems and environment, end-to-end connected-oriented and dedicated-media communication thorough initially circuit-based and later to virtual circuit-switching methods.
As known by those well-versed in the art, hybrid MPLS-enabled IP network system enables circuit-switching for IP technology. Whereas technologist are aware the network environment is more secure at the MPLS network system section due to the use of circuit-switching method, they also understood that the network security vulnerability could be exploited at the IP section of network and router.
This is due to the ability for malicious users to exploit IP connectionless/stateless and share-media scheme of communication for anonymous intrusive eavesdropping, and more importantly, the ability to insert malicious instructions or programs at the network-level. Thus, there is a need to elimination said area of vulnerability in order to enhance security in the network-level of the environment.
In short, there is a need for another internetworking system and environment which does not, in anyway, uses connectionless and shared-media network topology and methodology. Method for creating such internetworking environment was shown in Malaysia Patent No. MY-129914-A by C T Lee, coined as Virtual Dedicated-Media Internetworking (VDMI) environment.
As known by those skilled in the art, prior art neither have the ability subscribe to nor concurrently support more than one ISP not to mention the ability to provide subscribers to subscribe to disparate internetworking environments. Basically, present network devices are not able to concurrently support dedicated-media and connection-oriented internetworking environment, such as VDMI, along with the present shared-media Internet environment. In short, prior art documents are engineered in a way where they are neither able to concurrently support multiple ISPs nor multi-mode internetworking environment, at the subscriber level.
The present invention is design to able subscribers to subscribe for multimode connectivity to multiple ISP and Application Service Provider (ASP) for disparate internetworking environments. The present invention provides for a novel controller for network devices, having means to subscribe and allocate resources for connectivity to multiple ISP and ASP in a multimode internetworking environment, concurrently.